


Mother's Day

by artemisscribe



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: John and Gordon are in it too but only for like two lines, i intend it to be good but some may see the end as slightly body horror, medical trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-22 06:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20869439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemisscribe/pseuds/artemisscribe
Summary: An annual trip is made harder by the recent disappearance of Jeff





	Mother's Day

Scott’s letting Alan drive today. 

It's been a week since Alan passed his test and the novelty hasn’t worn off yet. Scott likes it when Alan’s excited. Not even flying One gets Scott very excited anymore. He wonders if maybe it’s just a consequence of getting older. But then Dad was always excited about lots of things. Maybe excitement is a bell curve? Or whatever the reverse of a bell curve is. A cup curve? That’s not important now, he can look it up later. Or maybe it  _ is _ a bell curve but the thing that changes is apathy levels rather than excitement? 

Scott shakes his head and makes himself look out of the window as the California scenery passes by the window at an exactly on the speed limit 55mph. Alan is, as ever, incredibly precise. 

“What are you smirking at?” Alan asks, checking the still empty road in his side and rear view mirrors. 

“You, all cute with your hands at ten and two” Scott smiles, nodding at the steering wheel. “A week after I passed my test I was all one hand on the wheel and one arm resting on the window.”

“Didn’t you also drive Dad’s Ferrari into the pool a week after you passed your test?” Alan asks, tilting his head in Scott’s direction but never taking his eyes off the straight, empty road.

“First of all it was a Porsche, and second of all I backed it through the fence around the pool deck, I didn’t drive it into the pool!” Scott grins as Alan snorts, “I swear to God Allie, every time Dad told that story the car got more expensive and the damage got worse!”

“Yeah that sounds like Dad” Alan smiles, shaking his head. 

The comfortable silence lasts a beat too long and turns sad.

“Hey Scott?”

“Yeah Alan?”

“Are we really giving up on him?”

Scott’s eyes prickle as his little brother’s voice wavers. He steels himself and hopes that when he tells Alan the lie that it will sound more convincing than when he tells it to himself.

“We’re not giving up on him. But he wouldn’t want us to just focus on him while other people need our help too” he says.

Alan nods, but the silence tells Scott that his brother doesn’t really believe him anymore than he believes himself. Scott hates all of this. He just wants to go back to a time when his biggest problems in life were his Dad making fun of him for bashing a fencepost. 

“He even left the damn fence wonky you know!” Scott adds with forced cheer, and for the first time Alan takes his eyes off the road; just as eager as his big brother to get back to a happier place. 

“You’re kidding?”

“No I mean it. I’ll show you when we get to the house” Scott says. And then, because he’s almost as much of a tease as his father, “I mean,  _ if _ we ever get to the house if you keep driving like Virgil.”

“The speed limit is fifty five” Alan says firmly.

“Don’t you use your Thunderbird voice on me!” Scott warns with a smile, “You can’t even see the other car anymore!”

“Well that’s because John is a leadfoot.” Alan says, “And anyway we’re only ten more minutes away.”

“It could be five if you put your foot down.” Scott says, shrugging. “Just saying.”

Seven minutes later they finally turn into the driveway of the beautiful cliff top mansion. The house was the first that Jeff had custom built for the family and it’s obvious, looking at the sleek clean lines and long expanses of glass, to see where the inspiration for the villa on the island was born. The other car is already parked up in front of the house when they arrive. Their brothers have very much beat them to it. Something only reinforced as Virgil opens the front door of the house.

“What took you so long? Did you walk?” he calls out, leaning against the doorframe. 

“See?” Scott tells Alan, “Even slow poke over there is mocking you!”

“Yeah yeah” Alan replies before turning to Virgil. “That joke doesn’t work when you can see us literally climbing out of a car.”

Virgil just grins and ruffles Alan’s hair as he takes his bag off him. 

“You wanna share with Gordon or John?”

“Oh definitely John” Alan says,

“Wise choice.” Virgil nods, picking up Scott’s bag with his free hand, “I’ll dump your bags. The others are in the kitchen, Mabel made lunch.”

Scott puts a hand on Alan’s back to steer him into the open living space. Three sofas face each other around a large coffee table, beyond them is a gleaming brushed steel kitchen that their father used to enjoy showing off in, then a large wooden family dining table that looks oddly out of place compared to the rest of the clean mid-century modern furniture. 

John and Gordon are piling grilled chicken and quinoa salad high onto their plates and laughing about something that happened in the car on their way from the airfield. Alan perks up at the sight of food and hurries to join them. 

“You started without us?” He says, grabbing a plate, “Who raised you?”

John and Gordon both point at Scott,

“He did!” Gordon says around a mouthful of chicken. 

“Scott has beautiful table manners” says the woman bringing a basket of warm bread rolls to the table. “The rest of you not so much” she adds as they pounce on the rolls. 

“Thanks Mabel!” John smiles. Alan and Gordon chorus less intelligible thanks of their own. 

Mabel shakes her head as she turns to face Scott. He in turn wraps her in a hug.

“Hi Mabes, how are ya?” he asks

“All the better for seeing your handsome face” she grins, pinching his cheek. 

She’s small and plump. About fifty with laughter lines around her eyes and flecks of grey through her dark braid. She runs her hand up into Scott’s hair where he has silver of his own. 

“You joining me in the old timers club already?”

“Work’s been a bit of a bitch lately” Scott sighs. 

Mabel squeezes his arm fondly.

“Well now you can have a nice little break for a couple of days,” she says, “So come and eat and relax.”

“I will” he says, “But first is it okay if I…?”

He trails off as he nods his head back in the direction of the door. 

“Go right ahead sugar, we said you were coming” Mabel smiles. “I’ll save you a plate from this pack of wild animals.”

Scott can’t help but laugh as his brothers start to howl like wolves. He heads back into the hallway where he runs into Virgil who’s frowning in the direction of the noise.

“What’s going on in there?” Virgil asks

“Oh you know,” Scott shrugs, “General insanity.”

“Ah!” Virgil replies, “The usual then.”

“Yeah…” Scott says, letting an awkward pause hang in the air between them as he tries out the taste of words in his mouth before he attempts to use them. “So um… have you uh…”

“Been in?” Virgil asks. Scott nods. “No, um… not yet. I’m gonna eat first you know. Long journey and all that. Why? Are… um, are you…?”

“Yeah” Scott says. “Just to check in you know. For my own peace of mind. We don’t get out here enough.”

“Yeah” Virgil agrees. 

He waits until his brother has taken a few more steps before calling after him.

“Hey Scott?”

“Yeah Virg?” Scott’s voice is almost a sigh at this point. He just wants to get this over with. 

“Are you gonna tell her?” Virgil asks. 

“Tell her what?”

“That he’s gone.” 

Scott sighs again and runs a hand through his hair. 

“Honestly Virgil, I don’t even know if he’s gone” he says. 

Virgil opens his mouth but Scott shakes his head,

“No,” he says. “We’re not doing this now. Just go get some lunch and I’ll be with you in five.”

He leaves Virgil standing in the hallway as he slips through the third door on the right. The room is bright and airy and comfortingly familiar to Scott. He has memories of playing on the rug here in his parents room, of sitting on the side of the tub in the bathroom here watching his father shave, of helping his mother fasten a bracelet at the vanity table in the dressing room. 

It’s changed over the years of course. Mom spilt red wine on the white sheepskin rug they used to have in here so now it’s a woven sky blue thing. The summer before Virgil went to college he spent a weekend painting a mural of flowers on the wall opposite the bed. The ugly old armchair Dad insisted on bringing over from Kansas is half covered by a lumpy blanket that Gordon made when he went through his knitting phase. 

The biggest change of course is the bed. Gone is the big, custom made kingsize bed that could comfortably fit the whole family on Christmas mornings, that Mom would tuck them into when they were sick so she could keep a special eye on them. In its place is a profiling bed from the hospital and the assorted paraphernalia of long term intensive care. 

This room makes his brothers uncomfortable, but it’s one of the few places that Scott feels at peace these days. He crosses to the bed, his footsteps almost in time with the slow steady beep of one of the machines. He draws a practiced eye over the figure in the bed, looking for changes, good or bad, or anything out of place. 

She is thin and frail, nearly a decade in a bed has wasted nearly all her muscle to nothing. One delicate hand rests on her stomach, the other lies straight by her side so that the various wires that monitor her can be better aligned. Scott gently closes his hand around hers as he leans in to kiss her forehead. 

“Hi Mommy” he smiles, “Happy birthday.”

**Author's Note:**

> So Mama Tracy is a super interesting character to me and also I feel like Jeff is exactly the sort of person who just won't accept that he can't fix something. So confronted with a wife who's had a terrible accident and won't wake up I think he'd want her cared for in the hopes that one day technology would advance enough for her to recover. This fic is also a contrast between the boys choosing to give up the search for Jeff and Jeff refusing to give up on his wife. 
> 
> Mabel is of course Mama Tracy's carer who I feel would be a dear family friend by this point. 
> 
> I feel like maybe this could be something bigger, but right now I'm very ill so all I can manage is this sort of proof of concept thingy that I'm trying out. I dunno, I like it. I hope you do too.


End file.
